Recent events in the world have given rise to concerns about unconventional terrorist attacks using biological, chemical, and/or radioactive weapons of mass destruction. These events have further heightened international awareness of the vulnerability of food and water supplies of nations to terrorist attacks. Certain biological, chemical and/or radioactive agents can be used in such attacks to dangerously contaminate food and water supplies. Such contamination may have widespread destructive effects on a large population resulting in large numbers of fatalities, serious acute long-term health effects such as fetal abnormalities, paralysis, blindness, physical disfigurement, and mental debilitation, and chronic illnesses such as cancer. The deliberate contamination of food and water is a real and current threat.
The U.S. Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified several harmful contaminants that can be critical agents for possible terrorist attacks. Among the high-priority biological agents (“Category A” agents) are Bacillus anthraces (anthrax) and Clostridium botulinum (botulism), both of which are deadly pathogens and can be used to contaminate food and water.
The majority of harmful contaminants identified by CDC were classified as “Category B” agents because they are moderately easy to disseminate and cause moderate morbidity and low mortality. Some of the Category B agents include Salmonella spp. such as Salmonella typhimurium and Salmonella enteritidis, Shigella spp. such as Shigella dysenteriae, Escherichia spp. such as E. coli 0104:H4, E. coli 0157:H7 and E. coli non-O157:H7 STEC, Campylobacter spp. such as Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria spp. such as Listeria monocytogenes, and the like. Recently, the German government experienced great difficulty in both managing, and identifying the source of an E. coli 0104:H4 outbreak. E. coli can cause extensive damage to the kidneys and other organs.
The CDC further identified certain chemicals as possible agents for terrorist attack. Those include pesticides, dioxins, furans, polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs), cyanides, heavy metals such as arsenic, lead and mercury, and other natural and synthetic persistent toxins including mycotoxin and marine toxin. The CDC has warned that terrorists may use various combinations of these agents, and/or implement attacks in more than one location simultaneously.
These agents are also known to pose significant threat in the event that they are inadvertently introduced into the food and water distribution chain due to unintentional contamination of food (e.g., through processing failures or handling errors) unreated to terrorism. Major outbreaks of food poisoning occur all too frequently, sometimes affecting hundreds of thousands of people.
Some examples of large-scale outbreaks caused by unintentional contamination include, among other incidences, an outbreak of Salmonella enteritidis infection linked to a contaminated ice cream pre-mix sickened an estimated 224,000 people in 41 states in the U.S in 1984, an outbreak of Salmonella typhimurium infection linked to post-pasteurization contamination of milk from a U.S. dairy plant sickened approximately 170,000 people in 1985; an outbreak of hepatitis A, which may be the largest food borne disease incident in history, caused by tainted clams affected nearly 300,000 people in China in 1991; and an outbreak of Escherichia coli 0157:H7 linked to tainted radish sprouts served in school lunches sickened about 8,000 children with some dead in Japan in 1996.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has estimated that about two million children worldwide die from food and water contaminated by pathogenic microbes every year. In developed countries, one out of every three has suffered from some form of a food poisoning every year. It is estimated that about 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths occur annually due to food/water contamination in the U.S.
Food poisoning from contamination with pesticides, natural and synthetic toxins, marine toxins, mycotoxins, heavy metals, cyanide, and other acutely toxic chemicals also have been reported. In one deadly incident in 1981, a cooking oil product sold in Spain contaminated with a chemical agent that killed over 800 people and injured about 20,000. In 1985, nearly 1,400 people in the U.S. reported becoming ill alter eating watermelon grown in soil treated with the pesticide aldicarb. During 1971-72, more than 6,500 people were hospitalized with neurological symptoms and 459 died after eating bread made from mercury-contaminated wheat in Iraq. Additionally, in the 1960's, more than 200 people in Japan suffered from mercury poisoning after eating highly contaminated fish caught in polluted waters.
In today's global marketplace, the contamination of food in one country can have a significant effect on public health in other parts of the world. In 1989, approximately 25,000 people in 30 states in the U.S. were sickened by Salmonella chester in cantaloupes imported from Mexico. In 1996 and 1997, 2,500 people in 21 states in the U.S. and two Canadian provinces developed Cyclospora infections after eating tainted Guatemalan raspberries.
Another food contaminant is ionizing radiation which can cause damage to human cells. For example, in Russia as a result of the infamous Chemobyl nuclear accident, about 4,000 people were exposed to harmful radiation, such as iodine 131 (I-131), which later caused these people to develop thyroid cancer. Also, in March of 2011, due to at least partial meltdown of a nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan, high levels of radioactive materials entered the food supply on a continuing basis as efforts were continued to control damaged nuclear reactors. Japan placed restrictions on many foods including spinach and milk, that were produced in provinces exposed to the radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant. Iodine 131 (I-131). Cesium 137 (Cs 137), and Cesium 134 (Cs 134) were detected in food. Spinach from one farm in Hitachi, a town 45 miles away from the nuclear power plant, contained 27 times the amount of I-131, and four times the amount of Cesium considered safe. Raw milk from a dairy farm in Rate, over 18 miles from the Nuclear Plant contained I-131 levels 17 times higher than considered safe. High levels of I-131 can be absorbed in one's body through the consumption of milk, and can accumulate in the thyroid gland, causing thyroid cancer, as previously mentioned. Also high levels of cesium can damage cells and cause humans to develop other kinds of cancer. It took considerable time and testing efforts by Japanese technicians to determine the locations of food irradiated by the radiation seeping from the nuclear plant, and to as a result determine the food that had to be quarantined to prevent health damage to consumers. Since iodine I-131 has a half life of about eight days, it typically is a very dominate food contamination in at least the first few weeks after a nuclear reactor accident. Radioactive iodine may fall on land where cows are grazing, creating a major problem with contamination of milk. Radionuclides from a nuclear reactor accident may also fall as an invisible dust on fresh vegetables, causing radiation damage to consumers.
Although iodine 131 has a relatively short half-life of eight days, as indicated, other radiation products will remain a problem, such as ground contamination by radioactive cesium. Cesium-137 and Cesium-134 are nuclides having a half-life of about two years, and are produced in nuclear reactors rather than via nuclear explosions. As a result, people are exposed both externally by gamma radiation from the ground, and internally after consuming contaminated food containing radioactive cesium, for example. Although milk is a critical food stuff that can be readily contaminated by aforesaid irradiation products, meat, fresh water fish, and cereals can also be significant sources of these dangerous radioactive products. As to radioactive cesium that falls directly on soil, or is washed into the soil from grass or other vegetation by rain, it may be taken up by plants via the roots in subsequent years depending upon the type of soil. However, external gamma radiation from the ground may persist for three to five years, or longer, for cesium, and also for strontium radioactive products.
Accordingly, there is a need for a food testing device designed to implement rapid real-time testing of foodstuffs prior to consumption. There is a further need for a food testing device that is compact, portable and simple to use with little or no training in laboratory techniques. There is a further need for a food testing device that is designed to prevent or minimize the incidence of illness, injury and death caused by deliberate or unintentional contamination of food and water. In addition, as shown by recent major food contamination occurrences in Germany, and Fukushima, Japan, there is a need for a rapidly acting consumer food testing device that provides for transmitting to a remote monitoring facility the detection of contaminated food by the testing device, the identity of the food contaminate itself, the identity of the food, the source of the food, and the geographic location of the reporting consumer food testing device.